This study assesses the European Central Bank’s (ECB) crisis management performance and potential for crisis resolution. The study investigates the institutional and functional constraints that delineate the ECB’s scope for policy action under crisis conditions, and how the bank has actually...

This paper investigates the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policies. It identifies an antigrowth bias in the bank's monetary policy approach: the ECB is quick to hike, but slow to ease. Similarly, while other players and institutional deficiencies share responsibility for the euro's...

This paper analyses the issue of the dynamics of the TARGET2 system balances during the sovereign debt crisis, when some countries registered a decisive inflow of the central bank liquidity and others showed an outflow. The dynamics in the TARGET2 are here explained as being due to a fall in the...

The 2007–2009 financial crisis has shown the important role of the lender of last resort in restoring financial stability in the financial markets. A rethink of this doctrine is therefore needed. This article shows how a potential lender of last resort regime can be designed for the 21st century

Liquidity supply by a Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) can be pivotal for both the conduct of monetary policy and safeguard of financial stability. During the financial crisis, the importance of liquidity provision has significantly increased at both the macro-level – through the European Central...

We show that a reduction in lender of last resort (LOLR) policy uncertainty positively affects bank lending and propagates to investment and employment. We exploit a unique policy that reduced uncertainty regarding the availability of future LOLR funding for banks as a quasi-natural experiment....

The paper answers three questions.(1) Does it matter if a central bank suffers a large capital loss? (2) Can the central bank become insolvent? (3) When, how and by whom should the central bank be recapitalised?

The generalised pumping of central bank liquidity to the western financial systems in the post-2008 period has generated serious debate and controversy. For instance, should the central bank offer liquidity assistance to solvent financial undertakings facing serious liquidity difficulties even...

In a framework closely related to Diamond and Rajan (2001) we characterize different financial systems and analyze the welfare implications of different LOLR-policies in these financial systems. We show that in a bank-dominated financial system it is less likely that a LOLR-policy that follows...